


life where none can exist

by Eloritia



Series: Secret Shinigami Submissions [2]
Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga), Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Childhood memory, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 21:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12117183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloritia/pseuds/Eloritia
Summary: A childhood memory with A and B.Written for annoyingpandauniverse at 2017 Secret Shinigami Exchange on tumblr





	life where none can exist

The rain has been hammering down on the roof and against the windows of the old orphanage for the past two days. Ground underneath has been long turned into mud and looking out from the attic window a boy with wild black hair could swear that he sees hands reaching up out of the mud to him. But the rainfall is heavy, the glass is dirty on the outside, and B’s vision, and sanity, have seen better days. 

He is thirteen, “the devil’s age” as he jokes to A sometimes, who rolls his eyes in response and tells him to stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, over and over and over again. His jokes are growing too repetitive for comfort.  He is in second place, he is eight years older than he thought he would be, and he hasn’t felt this alive in years. This alive under the roof that seems to suck out everything that they have to ofter, between old pained walls, the floors with too many stories to tell to the children walking them every day, in a place that B swears life can’t exist. A shakes his head and returns to his books and papers as always when B brings the impossibility of this up.

But now he isn’t sitting by the books, he is dozing off quietly up in the attic with him, indulging in the little weird request, one of the few that B makes nowadays. The flash of red fur outside at the edge of the trees makes B jump a little and come tumbling down from the box that he was perched on previously. He crawls over to A and shakes him away to the choir of hushed whispers ranging from “C’mon, its going to run away” and “get your lazy ass up and look.” The onslaught of excited tugs and shakes makes A groan in response and attempt to pull B in so he doesn’t have to actually wake up. It works usually, but seeing a fox is not in the realm of usual. And with B’s obsession with the little, sometimes not so little, things it’s impossible. So A groans and pulls himself to his feet to wiggle over to the box and look outside into the rainy evening. He still gets a glimpse of it, the orange fur, way too bright for the current weather, full and puffy to keep the body warm, and the eyes looking up at the window before the animal scurries away into the protective cover of the forest. He can feel the excitement radiating off of B, at such a little thing too.

“I told you that we have foxes here.” 

“I never doubted you, you know, I just said that no one else saw them around the house.”

“Same thing.” B waves his hand and presses close to the glass pane of the window in an attempt to see the fox again, but the small animal has already made it’s way into the shadows as the rain has started coming down more heavily. He doesn’t stop A from sliding back off onto an old blanket on the floor in an attempt to take another nap.

It’s another hour until A is shook awake again by B, this time to go downstairs to their room because the bed check time is in a few minutes and neither of them are too excited to get into trouble. Especially A.

The floorboards creak as they make their way to the door and then carefully down the stairs. B pretends he doesn’t feel the squishy mush under his feet instead of the hard wooden boards of the staircase, he knows it’s not there, he  _knows_  but knowing and actually feeling it are a bit different, the second always trumps the first. 

A drags himself along after the smaller boy, slipping past the staff room and into the common halls. The way B moves silently across the otherwise creaky floorboards always surprised him, no one else in the house can move than quietly. Maybe L, but some of them don’t even believe that L exists.

They get into their beds ten minutes before the staff comes in to check up on them. The door opens and one of the caretakers looks in to check on them. B faints sleep, A turns on his side and squints over at the door like he was just woken up. A routine in a way. The woman wishes him goodnight and leaves, a few steps down the hall to the next door. Another routine. B climbs out of his bed and into A’s, snuggling up to him with a soft sigh.

B swears life can’t exist in these walls, they can’t exist under this roof that seen so much sorrow and grief. They can’t live between these walls that seen death and life, and love and hate. And yet they are here, breathing and  _alive_ , they are here and they will survive this.


End file.
